On Tyrolean marble in Vinschgau and Wipptal

Appendix.

Natural history.

In these pages, detailed accounts of Tyrolean white marble suitable for sculptural work were provided quite some time ago, and it is remembered that the Imperial-Royal court sculptor Kißling, who deserves praise for having first brought attention to this matter in our days, had no hesitation in placing the white marble from Schlanders or Göflan on a par with that of Carrara. It is earnestly to be hoped that these reports will not remain unused. Perhaps it will contribute to the advancement of the cause if it is shown that other discerning men judged in the exact same way long ago, and that the wealth of our land in this respect was known long ago, and also utilized more than in our present days. Proof of this can be found in an academic speech or treatise printed in Innsbruck in 1738 by the archivist Anton Roschmann, entitled: Reguum animale vegetabile et minerale medicum Tirolense, a small work which, however brief and cursory its listing of the most remarkable natural history features of Tyrol may be, always contains many valuable hints and reports. Mention is also made therein of the Tyrolean varieties of marble. In the Vinschgau near Schlanders, says Roschmann, there is an entire high mountain of white marble which even surpasses that of Carrara in firmness. From such marble, the esteemed sculptor Ingenuin Lechleitner of Prutz carved the beautiful statue of St. John of Nepomuk on the Inn bridge (which unfortunately later sank into the Inn river during a flood). Immense pieces of such marble were delivered via the Inn to Vienna, and were used there by the famous Tyrolean artists Strudel and Rauchmüller to create the magnificent column erected to the honor of the Holy Trinity. Roschmann further mentions the white marble mountain at Ratschings near Sterzing, where within the range of an hour's walk so many stone fragments, some quite regular, lie accumulated that at first glance one believes to see the ruins of a great submerged city of marble. Shortly before that time, large statues had been roughly carved from this marble directly in the mountains, and a large block weighing more than 80 centners had also been transported to Munich. Furthermore, mention is made of a quarry of white and reddish marble located halfway between Sterzing and Innsbruck, which however is inferior to that of Rattenberg, with which the parish church in Innsbruck was decorated; then of the marble at Eben, where yellow and blackish marble were discovered in addition to the longer-known white and red. Mr. Roschmann found particularly remarkable the marble quarry near Brixen, from which the beautiful green columns at Nymphenburg near Munich, as well as those of the high altar of the parish church in Innsbruck, are said to have come.